Woodruff’s Duncton Chronicles were finally started on the Longest Night following, as a tale told to a community of impatient moles.
‘We’re not going to have to wait until you’ve scribed them all down, are we?’ asked one of them.
He shook his head, smiled, crunched a worm and said, ‘I’m ready to begin it now if you like.’
‘You do that, mole! But wait while we get comfortable.’ So Woodruff did, and started in the traditional way: ‘From my heart to your hearts I tell this tale …’ Then he paused, and smiled again, and began like this: ‘Bracken was born on an April night in a warm dark burrow, deep in the historic system of Duncton Wood, six mole years after Rebecca …’ So began Woodruff’s first telling of the Chronicles of Duncton Wood which took place over the cold wintry weeks that followed his last Longest Night. When it was done, and old Woodruff had told his tale just as he had scribed it, moles noticed that he was silent, and seemed to have little more to say.
Yet though the scribing of the Chronicles seemed to be his greatest task, yet he left one more gift to moledom.
For aging though he was, he still found strength to direct others to create a great Library at Duncton Wood, wherein all those texts scattered from Uffington and other places during the war of Word on Stone were joined in safety with those left behind by Spindle, Mayweed, great Tryfan, and holiest of all, by Beechen when he was young.
At the end of his life Woodruff would often say that nomole’s task is ever complete, and that all he can do is to leave what was left to him ready for those yet to come.
‘One day,’ he said, ‘others not yet born will inherit this great Library we have made. To it they will bring new texts, or old texts that our generation has not yet re-discovered. A few texts, and very few perhaps, will be scribed here, using all that we have left behind and the experience gained after.
‘Indeed, though the Chronicles are done, one last task seems to remain if the ministry of Beechen, and the work of Tryfan and so many others, is to find permanence, and not be lost through the erosion of time and moles’ forgetfulness.
‘Aye, there shall yet be another mole to come out of obscurity and show future generations what the Stone Mole’s teachings were. A great mole shall he or she be. More than scribe, more than a warrior, more than a leader …’
Strangely, in his last weeks Woodruff spent much of his time in the obscurest part of the Library to which he had contributed so much. There, amongst that collection of texts which librarians call Rolls, Rhymes and Tales, Woodruff found comfort and solace. Those nearest to him spoke out again the tales he loved, and which for one reason or another he had not included in his Chronicles.
‘There’s a Book of Tales here,’ he would murmur dreamily, ‘but another must begin to scribe it. And that mole that shall teach others of the Stone Mole’s work, shall come here one distant day, and finish it. Now tell me a tale of the moledom that I love …’
These were the last words great Woodruff of Arbor Low spoke, for during the telling of that last tale, Woodruff heard the Silence of the Stone, and went into it.
Some moles say the tale he was being told was never finished and awaits completion still. Others believe its end is to be found in a tale told long after he had gone.
For the scribing of the Book of Tales which he thought must one day begin, and the coming of the great mole who would complete it, these things came to be as he said they would. Only in that way was Woodruff’s task complete at last, and Tryfan’s too, and Bracken’s before him. For the past becomes the present that we live, and for good or ill, the future lies in the present we pass on. May our lives make a blessing then on the lives of the moles that follow us … and may moles find solace, comfort and inspiration, in the Book of Tales that Woodruff foresaw would one day come…